This wouldn’t fully set for at least forty-eight hours. I took a breath, looked around, and felt myself close up, my skin thicken and expand. It was possible that it ruined the painting, this step a misstep, but I didn’t think so. The click in my brain, the voice of the painting, my god, my north star, told me it would work.

Still—anything can be destroyed.

Chapter Six

Chapter Six

T he next morning, I found myself wanting to press something into the slowly curing surface, something organic. Something foreign and delicate. This hadn’t been in original Prudence but it didn’t matter. I was moving on, to something better.

I wanted tulips, orange ones, maybe. And—I was almost out of food. Time to find town.

The promises lining Granger’s driveway were painted on the reverse with local attractions. Driving away from the retreat, I was presented first with a cluster of music notes dotting a cloudy painting of Tanglewood, the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra; then a jockey perched astride a sprinting thoroughbred at the Saratoga Race Course; next, hikers adjusted their packs atop Jiminy Peak; then apple-cheeked families picking matching fruit from nearby orchards; and finally, renderings of the Colonial buildings at RPI and the Gothic ones at Emma Willard School were accompanied by “Parent’s Weekend—Commencement—Book Early!”

I drove to Union Vale, the nearest town, where the only market was a Stewart’s gas station. I bought boxes of cereal, a gallon of milk, and some frozen hamburgers, and as the cashier rang me up I asked for directions to the nearest farmers market. Speaking to another person after so many days of complete and total solitude sounded weird and I almost laughed at my own voice, so scratchy and halting.

“Uh…” She paused. “It’s Sunday, so…it’s the good one. New Lebanon, hon,” she said. “North on 22. And—you got paint on your face.”

“Oh,” I said, raising my fingers to my cheek.

“No.” She pointed, looking at me with unvarnished pity. “Your nose.”

“Thanks,” I told her, peeling off a strip of something whitish. She put out her hand like it was a piece of gum, threw it in the trash, and we both smiled. It was nice; she made me feel like a person.

I followed the two-lane road north, until a hand-painted sign announcing the market came into view. I parked in a dirt lot and wandered the dozen or so stalls, buying bread and cheese until I found someone selling wet bunches of tulips and freesias.

And as I was rummaging through the buckets of imported flowers, someone called my name.

“HIIIII!” the voice yelled, laughing. “OHMYGOD!”